By Andrew Warshaw
December 12 – Sepp Blatter has confirmed once and for all that he is calling it a day by deciding not to appeal to the Swiss federal courts to clear his name but has launched a major rebuke over the way he perceives he was treated – and the way his successor Gianni Infantino is now running the show at FIFA.
The former FIFA president last week failed in his last-ditch appeal to the Court of Arbitration for Sport to have his six-year ban from the game overturned but says that, at 80, he has reached the end of the road.
In an interview with Le Monde, Blatter still insists he did not cheat anyone over authorising that infamous CHF 2 million payment in 2011 to Michel Platini, then FIFA vice-president and head of UEFA. Platini, who had his own ban reduced to four years by CAS, is reported to be taking his appeal to the civil courts but Blatter says he will not follow suit.
“This was my last fight in terms of sports law. I do not want to mix sports law with the common law. I had asked for total acquittal (rather than a reduction). In football, you also learn to lose.”
Blatter told le Monde he wanted to stage a joint appeal with Platini but that the Frenchman turned this down because he was pressing for a quick hearing in order to maintain his chance of succeeding Blatter at FIFA. “I would have liked him and his lawyers to agree to defend our case together. But he wanted to go quickly to save his candidacy.”
Even though the pair are barred from all official football activities, Blatter believes Platini is young enough to stage a comeback. “Platini is a star. He could come back if he wishes. He has only three years of suspension (left). Time flies. He’s young, he’s twenty years younger than me.”
Not for the first time, Blatter claimed the ongoing corruption scandal that brought about his downfall was partially as a result of Qatar winning the vote to stage the 2022 World Cup over the United States.
“The two associations who most wanted to have the World Cup, England and the US, are bad losers and then came this US investigation into the confederations of North and South America.
“The Americans tried to open things against me. But there is nothing. It was a little gesture of revenge against the Qatar decision.”
Although widely understood to have supported the American bid for 2022, Blatter added: “I knew that Qatar would win before opening the envelope.” Not, he added, because the Qatari bid team did anything untoward but because of politics.
“I have always said that the World Cups are not allocated through gifts or invitations made right and left but due to political influence. If sponsorship had had an influence, the United States would have won, with their large contracts. Qatar would have had no chance.”
Blatter also took the opportunity to have another dig at the FIFA ethics committee which cleared his successor, Gianni Infantino, from any wrongdoing during the summer. He reserved particular irritation over the FIFA Congress vote, led by Infantino, to hire and fire members of the independent judicial bodies.
“This proves that the ethics committee was not independent,” charged Blatter. “Infantino can choose members of select committees for one year. This calls into question the whole principle of independence. Congress should never have accepted this amendment in May in Mexico City.”
Staying on the subject of Infantino, he said it was only right that his successor earns less than he did.
“That’s perfectly normal. I gave my life to FIFA and put its finances in order. When I arrived FIFA was in the red. After 17 years as president, there was $1 billion in cash and $1.5 billion of reserve.”
While Blatter’s critics will regard his comments as sour grapes and the ramblings of an embittered 80-something, he also hit back at the decision by FIFA’s ethics investigators to open a formal probe into the $80 million in pay rises and bonuses that he, Jérôme Valcke and Markus Kattner awarded themselves over a five-year period until they were suspended or fired by the governing body.
FIFA’s American lawyers Quinn Emanuel released detail in June that the trio had approved a series of bonuses saying they had made “a coordinated effort” to “enrich themselves” between 2011 and 2015.
“This report is false. FIFA knows this,” declared Blatter. “The new administration of FIFA is trying to harm my image. If this ends up going before Swiss justice, they will find that everything I earned was legal.”
Making the same point with another publication, Switzerland’s Tages Anzieger, Blatter declared: “The $80 million include amounts that are not true. My contracts have always been signed by the necessary authorities.”
Returning to the subject of Infantino’s policies and his plans to cut costs, Blatter does not mince his words.
“How can we drastically reduce development programmes, especially in Africa? And how can we say that we no longer need a “task force” against racism? Every two weeks he proposes something else. One example is the World Cup with 40 or 48 teams … The current format with 32 teams is a very good formula. ”
As for Fatma Samoura, FIFA’s new secretary general who was Infantino’s personal preference, Blatter states bluntly: “She knows nothing about football.”
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